R. H. Robertson - Life and Career

Life and Career

Robertson was born in Philadelphia of Scottish parents. His father was Archibald Robertson. He was educated in Scotland, then graduated from Rutgers College in 1869. He apprenticed for several years in Philadelphia with Henry A. Sims, then moved to New York to work first for George B. Post, then in 1873-74 for Edward Tuckerman Potter. Having completed one of the first houses in America that manifested the "Queen Anne style", a cottage for Theodore Timson in Sea Bright, New Jersey (1875), he formed a partnership with Potter's half-brother, William Appleton Potter, who also trained with Post. The partnership lasted from 1875 to 1881, working in a free Gothic Revival style; Robertson, the junior partner, appears to have been responsible for the firm's residences. In the 1880s, working on his own, he fell under the influence of H.H. Richardson's "Richardsonian Romanesque" a freely-handled revival style that depended for its effect on strong massing and the bold use of rustication. In the 1890s, in the wake of the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, he began to work in a classicizing style.

Robertson died June 3, 1919, at William S. Webb's Adirondack lodge in Nehasane, Hamilton County, New York, which he had designed. He is buried in Southampton, New York.